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some; but may this be tempered and controlled by the life of God in the soul, and be all the more blissful from having its roots in a true household piety. Let us have, where it is possible to have it, grace, beauty, poetry, music, and whatever is softening and refining in influence, throwing a halo of light and blessedness and joy about the hearth and home; but underlying all this, and pervading all this, may we have a godly Christlikelife. Let us in our dwellings daily draw near to the fount of light and life,' till they are pervaded with a rich evangelical element-the oxygen of the Christian atmosphere, which is able to save the soul.

affections of parents and children, are the | with much that is youthful and gladchannels for the conveyance of these to all the members of a household. They are the great arteries that lie near the heart of humanity, and to handle them roughly and rudely, is to interfere with healthy family action; but to use them wisely, and to cherish them assiduously, is essential to a godly domestic economy. Acts of kindness are longer remembered, than acts of teaching and reproving. The young mind, too, is susceptible of right impressions. There is a moulding age in all our households, a spring-time of life, when character is either marred or made. For a child is in a new world, and learneth somewhat every moment. His eye is quick to observe, his memory storeth in secret, his ear is greedy of knowledge, and his mind is plastic as soft wax.' The household rule is a government, whose prevailing law should be the law of love; but to make this rule what it ought to be, requires practical wisdom, and thorough earnestness. Where these have been obtained, family management has not been a barren enterprise, but like the diligent wise working of a mine, rewarding the worker with rich treasure; or, as the skilful cultivation of a field yielding its appointed crop. Truth is imperishable, and if we sow it bountifully, we shall reap also bountifully.

"If Christian families have ever been the spring-head of benevolent and holy influences-if it is here that the dews of heaven are first imbibed and collected-. if here the refreshing waters of pure and undefiled religion commence their earliest flow-if in the bosom of such families, we have the first settings of earnest thought, and the buddings of manly piety, and the best form of holy fellowship, it behoves us to 'look well to the ways of our household.' We plead for a real spiritual life in our homes. Let us have all that is manly in action, useful in life, solid in principle, in worth, in character, but all springing from a deep inward religious life. Let us have the joyousness of childhood in our homes, innocent glee and mirth, parents partaking in the loud laugh, and welling up in full sympathy

"The absence of this tone of piety in our professedly religious households, is a matter of sore lamentation. Domestic piety is, we fear, rather waning than waxing. The streams of our Christianity are multiplied and broadened, but we have not, as formerly, a deep, strong, rushing current.

"A system of training which does not insist on this as one of its first things, is not sound. Good books are good things. Good company is a good thing. Good preaching is a good thing. Good counsels are good things. But these can never stand in the place of Bible teaching. Gospel truth is manna to the hungry soul

milk for babes in Christ-food for children-strong meat for young men. It is the life-blood of our faith, and the staff of our spiritual being. A home without a Bible is a house without furniture-the ark without the covenant-a vessel without rudder and compass-a field unfenced. The Times newspaper says, 'We question if any person, of any class or school, ever read the Scriptures regularly and thoroughly without being, or becoming, not only religious, but sensible and consistent.

Scriptural instruction is too much undervalued, and therefore not urgently and faithfully plied.' This is not a quotation, but an editorial opinion; and a striking admission from the greatest organ of public sentiment in the civilized world.

"The newspaper well written, with its bold manly comments on men and things,

is becoming a prime organ of teaching to the religious world. Many Christians spend much time over its pages, and read it, apparently, with deeper interest than they do the Bible. Newspaper reading in excess has had an injurious effect, imparing the vigour of family godliness, and has given rise to a deep craving for a kind of photographic writing and preaching, which we do not think the strongest thing in our world. Literature with its charms, and politics with all their interest, can never become a substitute for Bible teaching. They cannot nourish the root of Domestic Piety. They contain no sentiments to sanctify and save the soul. In many religious families, evangelical truth is not earnestly taught as an indispensable element of spiritual life. The children have nothing more, daily, than a chapter hurriedly read, and a prayer as hurriedly said. And THIS course of instruction is curtailed, by sad omissions arising from domestic disorder and the professedly urgent calls of business, as if prayer and provender hindered a journey.' The same children are carried through a round of Sunday teaching from the pulpit, but it palls upon them, because it is not spoken of at home with solemn interest; and there is no effort to simplify it, and suit it to their capacities. So far from this, it is often openly and coarsely handled, and gives rise to caustic, ill-timed remark. Real Bible teaching requires us to go into details to put ourselves into sympathy with those we teach, and also with the truth taught to give forth the precious food in morsels, not in masses, and as is most adapted to the opening mind of youth. In doing thus we are to be unwearied, as if diligence could never be sick at heart, and teaching our own, never sore of foot. In a fastidious, book-surfeited age like ours, there is a danger of the Bible being a too much unused, undervalued volume in the religious dwellings of the land. There are weighty reasons for dealing with it far otherwise.

"We are passing through a busy bustling age, one of ceaseless activity and of national enterprise. Men have learnt to act in concert with each other, and by so doing have reached great results. The

| spirit of so acting has been caught by the Church, and many have more love to serve God in the crowded congregation, than in privacy of retirement.

"Public worship, as to form, is an easy thing, but homestead godliness requires real-heartedness and constant watchfulness, or its glow soon departs. The lamp must be daily trimmed and fed with oil, the fire daily tended and supplied with fuel, or both will expire. And equal constancy is demanded in keeping alive the kindled coals of devotion on the altar of the heart. Religious parents, in the majority of instances, do not feel deeply their family responsibility, nor apprehend clearly the far-reaching consequences of home influences. The public ordinances of grace are valuable and indispensablethe service of song is attractive-pulpit appeals and teaching stir up hearts and intellect-the fellowship of the saints is profitable-the godly gatherings to ply the people with appeals to liberality on behalf of our religious institutions are needed-acting in concert with likeminded men and genial spirits is stimulating and praiseworthy-the works of benevolence must have their largehearted workers. In these things many religious men find all the religion they have. But these can never be a substitute for domestic piety. Where this is sedulously cultivated, we find the pith, the marrow, and the back-bone of our common Christianity. Multitudes, by thus acting, reverse the order of a true religion, which inserts its leaven in the centre, working thence to the circumference-from the individual to the mass; but many prefer working from the circumference to the centre-from the mass to the individual.

"In professedly religious families there is, oftentimes, a sad lack of needful authority and obedience. There is no aptitude on the part of parents to govern. Their rightful moral influence has gradually diminished in their households. They hold the reins so loosely, as almost to invite their children to wrest them from their hands. They give their commands in so feeble, faltering a tone, as to warrant early disobedience. Their counsels are ill-conned, ill-timed lessons, as far as

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possible removed from wisdom, and without even a glimpe of insight into humanity. When their authority is wantonly trifled with, they seem utterly unconsious of the wrong done to themselves and to their children. Commands and threatenings are unheeded as an idle tale, by the oldest and the youngest around them. Such parents know nothing of ruling well their own house, and of having their children in subjection.' Under such domestic management, disorder and confusion are the rule, not the exception. What unsightly scenes arise! What unseemly strivings of sons and daughters for mastery! What perilous yielding of fathers and mothers to the claim! What a giving up in despair of parental authority, under the stress of frequent family feuds! And if recovery of it be attempted for order's sake, it is by some coaxing promise-by the sacrifice of some principle -or by the application of an ill-judged physical force, which loosens the domestic bond, and shakes to the foundation the domestic constitution.

"Pious households are lights shining in a dark place; they are the salt of the earth to season it; they cannot be

'Like snow-falls in the river,

A moment white, then melt for ever.' "They are fountains from whence innumerable tributary waters flow into the great gulf-stream of life and salvation, to a dying, guilty world. They are as Jordan sending its living waters through the heart of the Dead Sea, disturbing and vivifying the domain of death. When the families of the carth are blessed, the

whole world shall be blessed indeed. It is a solemn thought that every child we train up in our homes, may be ‘a savour of life unto life,' or a savour of death unto death,' in his influence upon fallen humanity. The pebble thrown into the smooth-faced lake, produces circle after circle, and ring rises out of ring; so that from the centre to the circumference, a considerable width of water is agitated. Each child going forth from our respective homesteads is as a pebble in the great sea of society, a common centre from which waves of influence will incessantly flow forth, some more near and some more remote, and all for good or for evil in this fallen world of ours.

"How solemn is our position-how responsible our duties as parents! When we are laid in the grave, and sleep beneath the green sod, we shall not be dead, but living and speaking. The counsels we have given; the prayers we have uttered; the examples we have shown; will be re-embodied in our sons and daughters, and will be a living presence in the world, on the side of virtue or of vice. May we have grace given to behave so holily and unblameably in our families, that our last review of domestic life shall cast no dark shadow on our dying day, and plant no sharp thorns in our dying pillow; but may the legacy of prayers, counsels, and example, we have left our children, help to a peaceful parting with them, and as we stand on the border of two worlds, may the last rush of parental affection show itself in heartfelt yearnings for the salvation of our households."

Reviews of Religious Publications.

MISSIONARY TRAVELS AND RESEARCHES | large number of our readers are beforehand

IN SOUTH AFRICA, by DAVID LIVINGSTONE, LL.D., D.C.L.

London; John Murray.

Ir is hardly ever the case when we review a book, that we are pretty sure a

with us, having already perused the work and formed an opinion for themselves. Such, however, in all probability, is the fact in the present instance. The popularity of this publication is wonderful.

There it stands, in its brown binding, in every bookseller's window. In numberless drawing-rooms and boudoirs it may be found-thanks to Mr. Mudie for much of this-not lying there for show, but, by the cut page and thumbed cover, showing it has been read. The avidity with which the work is seized by all classes of people shows a strange revolution in the history of missionary literature, and betokens rapid progress, as we fondly hope, in the onward course of the good cause. The volume is worthy of its popularity. In all respects it appears to us most admirable. It is quite out of the question that, in our limited space, we should give anything like a competent review of its 683 pages. Our sense of its merits must not be estimated by the number of lines we devote to the discharge of our present very agreeable duty. Indeed, the extent to which the book has been purchased, and circulated, and read, renders it superfluous for us to say much. The humiliating necessity-under which most of the brethren of the craft unfortunately labour-that something should be done to excite curiosity in regard to their productions, and to commend them to the public as worthy of favour, has no existence in this case. Dr. Livingstone's well-acquired fame has been the best pioneer of his writings, and prepared the British nation at large to welcome them. The readers of our Magazine will have been previously acquainted with the out-knowledge which it contains. Our busiline of Dr. Livingstone's journeys and discoveries, as traced in the pages of the Missionary Chronicle soon after his return to England: but between that outline and the present book there is all the difference there can be between a rough diagram and a finished model, a mere sketch and an elaborate picture. As one here follows the faithful and laborious man, it is as if a moving panorama of the country of the Makalolo, the city of Linyante, the banks of the Zambesi, the Victoria falls, the coast of Loanda, and the mouths of the great river on the eastern shores of Africa, were before us, and we could see the whole depicted on coloured canvas, while specimens of produce and spoil, of grain and game, of

fruits, birds, insects and animals of all kinds were submitted by the lecturer to the close inspection of the audience. Dr. Livingstone's style is as easy and inartificial as it can be. He makes no attempt at fine writing, but yet there is a correctness, a compactness, a force in every sentence, which conveys to our minds impressions more vivid and distinct than we have been wont to receive sometimes from authors much more imaginative and pictorial. Occasionally a gleam of poctical feeling, however, lights up the description with a peculiar charm. For example, in describing insect life in the Mopane country, not very far from Iete, on the western side of Africa, he says, "In the quietest parts of the forest there is heard a faint but distant hum, which tells of insect joy. One may see many whisking about in the clear sunshine in patches among the green glancing leaves; but there are invisible myriads working with never-tiring mandibles, on leaves, and stalks, and beneath the soil. They are all brimful of enjoyment. Indeed, the universality of organic life may be called a mantle of happy existence encircling the world, and imparts the idea of its being caused by the consciousness of our benignant Father's smile on all the works of his hands."

But on the literary merits of the volume we cannot dwell, nor are we able to point out the vast stores of scientific and general

ness must be to indicate its great value in reference to missionary operations. And here we may be permitted to observe that we have never read anything which inspires a more impressive conviction of truthfulness than does every page of the book. There is not only a total absence of everything which the most fastidious and prejudiced against religion could call cant, but there is continually manifest a conscientiousness bordering on what might be termed the scrupulous, in every, even the least statement of fact. All the descriptions of natural objects are most rigidly exact, and one feels that not less rigidly exact are statements in reference to missionary labours and their results. Men who have no sympathy with us in

our religious views, have at times suspected writers on missions of over-colouring their pictures; but we are persuaded that no one will attribute this fault to Dr. Livingstone. Men of science, men of the severest habits of investigation, will feel as they read these pages, that they have to do with a witness as honest as he is intelligent. We cannot but augur great good from such a book being in the hands of such men.

one point, that no mere profession of Christianity is sufficient to entitle the converts to the Christian name. They are all anxious to place the Bible in the hands of the natives, and, with ability to read that, there can be little doubt as to the future. We believe Christianity to be divine, and equal to all it has to perform; then let the good seed be widely sown; and, no matter to what sect the converts may belong, the harvest

Take the following general testimony, will be glorious. Let nothing that I have p. 107:

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Many hundreds of both Griquas and Bechuanas have become Christians, and partially civilized through the teaching of English missionaries. My first impressions of the progress made were, that the accounts of the effects of the Gospel among them had been too highly coloured. I expected a higher degree of Christian simplicity and purity than exists either among them or among ourselves. I was not anxious for a deeper insight in detecting shams than others, but I expected character, such as we imagine the primitive disciples had, and was disappointed. When, however, I passed on to the true heathen in the countries beyond the sphere of missionary influence, and could compare the people there with the Christian natives, I came to the conclusion that, if the questions were examined in the most rigidly severe or scientific way, the change effected by the missionary movement would be considered unquestionably great. We cannot fairly compare these poor people with ourselves, who have an atmosphere of Christianity and enlightened public opinion, the growth of centuries, around us, to influence our deportment; but let any one from the natural and proper point of view behold the public morality of Griqua Town, Kuruman, Likatlong, and other villages, and remember what even London was a century ago, and he must confess that the Christian mode of treating the aborigines is incomparably the best.'

The following observations are conceived in an admirably catholic spirit, and are full of practical wisdom :

"Protestant missionaries of every denomination in South Africa all agree in

said be interpreted as indicative of feelings inimical to any body of Christians, for I never as a missionary felt myself to be either Presbyterian, Episcopalian, or Independent, or called upon in any way to love one denomination more than another. My earnest desire is, that those who really have the best interests of the heathen at heart should go to them; and assuredly, in Africa at least, self-denying labours among real heathen will not fail to be appreciated. Christians have never yet dealt fairly by the heathen, and been disappointed.

"I would earnestly recommend all young missionaries to go at once to real heathen, and never be content with what has been made ready to their hands by men of greater enterprise. The idea of making model Christians of the young need not be entertained by any one who is secretly convinced, as most men who know their own hearts are, that he is not a model Christian himself. The Israelitish slaves brought out of Egypt by Moses were not converted and elevated in one generation, though under the direct teaching of God himself."

The disinterestedness of Dr. Livingstone in his great work, is beyond all praise; and we are happy to be able to state, from what we know, that his conduct in this respect is a specimen of what may be found in the history of a large number of his brethren of all denominations.

The following incident is most characteristic, p. 189:

"As I had declined to name anything as a present from Sckeletu, except a canoe to take me up the river, he brought ten fine elephants' tusks and laid them

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